


My Lady Dragon

by Avia_Isadora



Series: Elleth Lavellan [10]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Face Slapping, Forgiveness, Older Characters, Submission
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:02:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22038244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avia_Isadora/pseuds/Avia_Isadora
Summary: Thom Rainier has been brought back to Skyhold and judged by the Inquisitor for his crimes.  Elleth Lavellan has given him his life if he vows to serve the Inquisition, but he knows it's only the beginning of his atonement.  Can he ever win back her trust after the lies he has told?  And is there anything that will heal their relationship?"He will be the man she wants because what else can he be now except the hero she bought and paid for?"
Relationships: Blackwall/Female Inquisitor, Blackwall/Female Lavellan
Series: Elleth Lavellan [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1566448
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	My Lady Dragon

He’s escorted, not dragged, and the shackles are off, but the soldier’s meaning is clear. “The Inquisitor wants to speak with you.” It’s not a request. Thom Rainier is fully aware that he’s lucky to be alive to hear it. He watched Elleth Lavellan execute two men with her own hands, in the main courtyard with the Sword of the Inquisition, and he had silently approved. What else can you do when a man shows no remorse from his crimes and in fact promises that given the opportunity will commit them again? But she could have used a headsman. She needn’t have done it herself.

“I must,” she said. “So that everyone will see that the Inquisition is unflinching.”

Not the Inquisition, he thought, but Elleth Lavellan. And she didn’t flinch or hesitate, not once. Anyone who thought an elf would be soft or weak was proved wrong. He’d showed her, before and privately, how to do it with one stroke, the weight of the sword behind it so it wasn’t all about her arm. She didn’t ask how he knew, and he didn’t tell her. 

And now it’s he who goes before her justice. In the Great Hall earlier she gave him his life, and he poured it out to her, threw his heart on the ground before her and kissed her with the shackles on his wrists while Josephine winced and Cullen looked like he’d rather be anywhere else. But he’d be kidding himself if he thought that was the end of anything. It was the beginning.

The soldier raps sharply on the door to her quarters. “Thom Rainier, ser.”

She opens the door almost immediately. “Thank you, Farrer.” 

“My pleasure, ser.”

She’s wearing full Inquisition uniform, which isn’t either a bad sign or a good one. Elleth never slouches around Skyhold in regular clothes. She’s conscious every moment that she is on display, a curiosity pointed out to newcomers, an inspiration to those who serve this cause, and an object of interest or derision to the Orlesians and ambassadors who come here now that the Inquisition has power. She is never out of the dress uniform except when she changes to armor for the field, or when she is in her own room and plans to stay there. Blue coat, brown leather breeches, the tight cinching sash beneath her belt – it is unvarying, iconic, as she intends it to be. She is the embodiment of a cause, not a person, as the Divine would be. That he’s seen her otherwise is a privilege he’s probably lost.

She shuts the door and carefully bars it while he stands on the stairs, and his brows rise. She’s locked herself in with a killer and then deliberately gives him her back as she walks up the stairs ahead of him. That’s bravado. That’s swagger. He’s never loved his lady more than now that she’s no longer his.

He follows her up. A fire is blazing on the hearth, though as usual in this dreary winter weather, the rain that followed him all the way from Val Royaux, it doesn’t make the room very warm. The ceiling is too high. The large windows and balcony doors are picturesque, but they make the place drafty, as Elleth constantly says. 

She turns in the middle of the floor. “Well? What do you have to say for yourself?”

That’s his cue. He planned what he would do. Thom drops to his knees. “No excuses, my lady.”

He actually doesn’t see it coming, focused on her right hand, the backhanded blow from the left. A slap across the face is a mild way of putting it. It’s hard enough to make his vision waver, hard enough to make his whole body sway, his eyes watering. He swallows, remaining on his knees in a neutral position like coming back into guard after a punishing shield bash. She has the right.

“No excuses? No excuses?” Her voice scales up. “What use are you?”

“Whatever use you care to put me to, my lady.” He’s ready for the blow this time. It rocks him back, but either it wasn’t as hard or he wasn’t startled.

“What use I care to put you to.” The fury is all that’s in her voice, and he doesn’t look up at her face, just keeps his eyes front and center. “I squandered the Inquisition’s coin on bribes to get you out. I squandered the Inquisition’s reputation and my own. And you put on that show in the Great Hall!”

“You asked me what was in my heart, my lady.”

“I told you to go with your gut.”

“Should I have shat on the floor then?” The words are out before he thinks about them. It’s probably not the time to have a smart mouth. He dares a glance upward.

She looks like she’s torn between laughing and slapping him silly again, and his chest aches with everything he’s lost. What he wouldn’t give to come home to her, to step back in time and into her trust, but he’s wasted that with his own lies. And that’s the heart of it – the lies, not the crime as it should be. He sees it in those cold, furious eyes beneath the elaborate tracery of the vallaslin. 

And she says it as though she read it in him. “Why did you lie to me?”

“I wanted you to think I was a better man.” It’s a true answer, but not a complete one. She deserves a complete one. “At first I didn’t think about it. I’d been Blackwall for years. You came looking for Blackwall and so you found him. And then….” He’s looking for the words while she’s pacing around him. “It was too hard.”

She snorts. “Too hard.”

“Yes, my lady. It was too hard. And I was a coward.”

Her voice comes from behind him. “That last night….” He can’t see her face, as she means him not to, but he hears the catch in her voice.

Thom closes his eyes. “I was going to the gallows, Elleth. I didn’t want my last memory of you to be a fight.”

“So you thought you would just disappear and I wouldn’t notice?” Her voice scales up, her footfalls tracing her path around him. “You thought if you just ran away I would never wonder why? I’d never look for you?”

“I thought I’d be dead first,” he snaps back, opening his eyes. “I thought I’d swing long before you figured out where I was. I’d never have to face you.”

“Coward!” This time he sees the blow coming, and he catches her wrist just short of his face. The mark on her hand glows green, nacreous with her rage.

Or pain. “Yes,” he says. “I was a coward. It mattered more to me to have a good memory of you than to tell you the truth. You know the kind of man I am.”

“I trusted you!” Her eyes are flaring like the mark.

“I told you not to.”

She wrenches her arm away and he lets her go, still kneeling when she stops eight feet away, her back to him. “Why did I ever put up with you?”

“The sex was good?”

Her shoulders shake. It might be rage or laughter. It might be tears. “That it was,” she says.

It’s the time for brutal honesty. It can’t get worse. “I loved you,” he says. “I never meant to. But I did. How could I not when you’re the bravest, finest….”

“Don’t you start.” She shakes her head but doesn’t turn. “Don’t you dare start telling me you love me. Don’t tell me you lied to me because you love me.” That time her voice breaks. He’s cut all the way to the bone, a wound he can’t heal, another crime that can’t be atoned for. The dead do not come back to life, and he knows he is the only one she has trusted with her heart in long years, since things she’s never told him but he knows lie beneath the surface. But at least he can not say that.

“I lied to you because I wanted you to love me.” And that’s the naked truth. He might as well spit it out. “You’d never love the man I really was. So I became someone I thought you could love, Warden Blackwall, a paragon of loyalty and service. I wanted you to love me.” She doesn’t move, so he goes on. “I’d been Blackwall for years. How could I say that I wasn’t a Grey Warden, a matchless warrior who championed the downtrodden? How could I tell you I was just a broken-down old mercenary with a price on my head that I richly deserved? How could I tell you I was nobody? A murderer for coin, a thug? When you looked at me, I saw the hero I wanted to be in your eyes. I wanted to be Blackwall for you.” 

He bends his head. He won’t cry. Or if he does, he won’t ask her pity. Least of all he deserves her pity. “But I couldn’t let Mornay hang for my crime. Blackwall couldn’t let Mornay hang. I pretended so much that I forgot…. The more I was Blackwall, the less I was Thom Rainier. So I had to be Blackwall and die as Thom Rainier. Which doesn’t make any sense.”

Her hand touches his hair. He hadn’t heard her move, but now she’s standing beside him. 

“You really did those things, Blackwall’s things. You really did defend the downtrodden and champion the weak. You’re the best trainer in the Inquisition and you’ve kept recruits alive who would otherwise be dead. You fought at my side at Adamant and you walked the Fade with me. You took on a dragon for me!” Her hand again, just a brush against the side of his bruised face. “You didn’t pretend those things. They really happened. I was there.”

“I really did the other things too.” He feels that needs to be said to balance the scales.

“You killed Challier’s entire family.”

“I gave the order.” He lifts his face and meets her eyes. “I didn’t stop it when I realized the children were there. I could have called the company off and I didn’t.”

“Why not?” her voice is level, grave.

“I was scared.” He shrugs. “I was in too deep. I knew what Chapuis would do if I failed after he paid me. He knew the children would be there. He set me up for it. But I could have not done it. I should have. I just didn’t. I played the Game.”

Her hand drops. “I don’t know if I can ever bear to touch you again,” she says calmly.

“I know that, my lady.” It’s only sorrow now. And of course, selfish man that he is, he’s mourning what he’s lost, not what others have.

“I have given you your life so that you may atone for your crimes.” She blinks, looking up at the ceiling. “So that you can be Blackwall. So that you can be the changed man I’ve known. But I can’t….”

“I know.”

“It’s the lies.” She walks away, as though she needs to warm her hands at the fire, standing before the blaze half-turned from him, silhouetted against the flames. De-escalating. That’s what she’s doing. She’s very calculating, very good at sizing up people. “I knew the Grey Wardens took in criminals. I knew they required penance and atonement. When I asked you back in Haven if you had a criminal past and you said yes, I knew it might be murder. I knew the Wardens take murderers. And I didn’t ask any more because I didn’t want to know. That was between you and the Wardens, I thought. You had confessed and given your life to service in atonement. If they granted you peace, that is their prerogative.”

He gets slowly to his feet, and she looks at him sharply. “The floor is cold. And my knees aren’t what they used to be.”

She shakes her head. “Then bring your rickety old bones over here. You can stand in front of the fire, but I forbid you a chair.”

Thom nods seriously. “I will not sit in a chair, my lady. Or I could kneel on the rug.”

“I expect you’d want a pillow if you were being flogged,” she says sharply.

“As you wish,” he says, but he can’t suppress the thrill that runs through him, the frisson that jolts from brain to privates. The idea of being flogged by her in front of this fireplace, of simply surrendering to the pain he deserves at her hands….

And she’s seen it, of course. It might be the firelight that lends that flush to her face, but the faint change in her breathing is one he knows.

Elleth swallows. “Do you know how I got you out of prison in Orlais?”

“You paid someone off. I expect it was expensive.”

“I paid off Emperor Gaspard, the one who hired Robert Chapuis,” she says precisely. “Josephine informed him that we would consider it a very great boon if Thom Rainier were returned to us and we did not need to use his lengthy confession that he had left at Skyhold, detailing Chapuis’ involvement and who he served.” Her voice is very precise. “We paid in coin and in our influence with the new king of Orlais, the one I accidentally put on the throne, the one who actually ordered the murders. He’d gotten a retainer to hire some thugs.”

He opens his mouth and shuts it again. “There was no written confession at Skyhold.”

“I lied. Josephine lied. I asked her to lie. And now she has assured Gaspard that she has personally destroyed this confession since we have Thom Rainier in our custody.” Elleth lifts her chin. “So when you accused me of being corrupt in the Great Hall in front of everyone, you spoke the absolute truth. I played the Game and I bought off a king and left the man who actually ordered the murders on the throne. I am precisely as corrupt as you accused me of being. And do you know why I did that?”

“Why?” he manages.

“Because I wanted to.” Her voice breaks a little. “I thought I might kill you myself. But I could not bear to let you go.”

“Elleth….” He thought she was incorruptible even as he accused her, that she of all people wouldn’t play the Game. And yet, a treacherous little voice whispers, you knew she might. You knew she was, of all things, infinitely practical and infinitely determined. You know one doesn’t live to be an old rogue by being entirely honest. Whatever she is now, My Lady Inquisitor, she hasn’t spent her life as blameless Chantry sister. You haven’t asked how she’s lived and how she’s survived in a world decidedly hostile to elves, and if you find the scars on her skin you have kissed them and asked for no stories of how they got there. He takes a breath. “Are you going to kill me now?”

“No.” Her voice is a little sad. “You heard my judgement in the Hall. You are free.”

“I heard you say my life belongs to you.”

“You can go if you want.”

“I pay my debts.” His eyes don’t leave her face. “I will serve you with my life. I will serve the Inquisition.”

“To pay off the debt?” She searches his face. She’s taken a step closer.

“Because we both want the world to be better than it is.” He takes a step closer too. “We’re two of a kind, aren’t we?” 

She nods, and he won’t ask whose blood is on her hands or what she blames herself for. He won’t ask how she came to be spying on the Conclave, an outrunner from a people who stick close to home, a Dalish with no close family in a culture that prizes family above all. He won’t ask when she lived in Halamshiral, who her dead son’s father was, who she lost to the Blight in Markham, why she hates the alienages so much, why she tells no stories of home. He won’t ask why she learned to pick locks like she does, or how she judges Cullen’s lyrium withdrawal so exactly. Those are questions for another day. 

“We want better,” she says. “And now we can actually do something about it. We’re not powerless anymore. The Inquisitor and the Warden can shape the world.”

“What gives us the right?” 

“There isn’t anyone else.” She shrugs, and now she’s close enough that he can almost feel the warmth of her body. “Who? The Wardens were decimated at Adamant. The Templars are all but destroyed. The mages have been fighting everyone blindly and have no leader. The Chantry can’t elect a new Divine on the 28th ballot. Gaspard? The King of Ferelden? Who do you think is going to act if we don’t? What better, more moral, more upright, more qualified person is going to come forward? We’re it. We can do it or it doesn’t get done.”

He nods. That’s nothing but simple truth. “So Andraste did send you.”

“All my life I have worshipped Mythal,” she says. “Maybe she and Andraste have tea up in the heavens. And I don’t even know if Mythal is real. But you were in the Fade with me. You saw the memory. I was spying, but when Divine Justinia called out for help I knew it wasn’t right for someone to be torturing an old woman. It’s that simple.”

It is that simple and Thom can add it up. “You were chosen because you chose. You could have walked away. You could have not interfered.”

“I couldn’t have. Not and be me.”

“Not and be you,” he agrees. She wants to defend the helpless. That’s in her bones, as sure as any violent need. “But the Inquisition….”

“I have to have something for myself.” Her eyes are perfectly clear, her hand is on his arm. “And I don’t know if I can forgive you.”

“Maybe I can make amends. You can punish me in any way you want.” And there’s the treacherous desire rising. What a whip hand she’d have, some part of him whispers.

“There’s a picture,” she says. “I like you on your knees.”

“I like being on my knees. On the carpet,” he adds.

Elleth smiles and shakes her head, and at last he can put his arms around her, draw her in so close that he could sink into her bones, fall into the scent of her and the firelight and the texture of her hair against his cheek. She takes a shuddering breath. 

You are my home, he wants to say, but it’s too much. This is too fragile. This is too easily broken again. He hasn’t the right, not yet. Not until he’s made it up to her, or at least until the wounds he’s inflicted have scabbed over.

She reaches up and touches his face gently, but it hurts. “You’re going to have a black eye tomorrow.”

“You hit hard, my lady.”

“I’d been winding up for that for a month.”

“Can’t say I blame you.” He reaches for her hand, bringing calloused archer’s fingers to his lips.

“This may require quite a lot of punishment.”

“I stand ready to serve,” he says gravely.

She laughs as he meant her to. They’ve always danced to the same tune, bawdy and gallant, tender and filthy. He doesn’t ask if it’s the best dance she’s ever had. It’s certainly right up there for him, and if there was as good once long ago he threw it away with his foolishness, thinking such things came along every day to handsome young champions. He knows now that they don’t. He knows what a rare and precious thing this is, a lover who shares your needs as well as your heart. This time he knew its value when he threw it away.

And she kisses him, testing. She’s testing how she feels, and he closes his eyes and bends into her. Maybe she doesn’t have to trust him to have him in her bed. Maybe she doesn’t have to trust him to let him stand in front of her, shielding her in the field. Maybe she can trust him with her body long before her heart.

And so he kisses her with all the words unspoken. If there is time this break will heal. If there’s not – well, there’s not. 

“No regrets,” she says, and bares her throat to him, letting him kiss all the way down to her tight buttoned collar. 

No fear, he thinks, my gallant lady. She will look her pain in the eye and stare it down like a dragon. 

He will be the man she wants because what else can he be now except the hero she bought and paid for? 

“None,” he says, and seeks to draw her down before the fire.

“The bed,” she says. “This room is too damn cold.”

“As my lady wills,” he says and follows her. The large mullioned windows keep out the night but not the cold, but there is now not a whisper against them, only a compelling silence. 

She stops beside him and looks out. “The rain has turned to snow,” she says.

“And none too soon,” he says. They will curl into chilly sheets behind red velvet curtains, make love as the fire dies down, find solace in flesh and lose themselves in desires coaxed by mastered techniques. The bed will warm. They will sleep curled together, nude beneath thick blankets, behind a door barred against the world. He will drift off warm and safe for the first time in months. She will sleep without an absence beside her. It doesn’t matter if he deserves it or not. When push comes to shove, Thom Rainier is a selfish man.


End file.
